Customer Reviews

Intermediate Cantonese: A Grammar and Workbook (Grammar Workbooks)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book is an excellent sequel to: "Basic Cantonese: A Grammar and Workbook" by the same authors. It (and its predecessor) are the best sources I've seen as far as really explaining how Cantonese works. There has been some other good material published in recent years for Cantonese learners (I give high marks to "Colloquial Cantonese" by Tong and James and "Teach Yourself Cantonese" by Baker and Ho) but this is the best treatment of Cantonese syntax I've come across- having worked through it I now feel confident that I can speak good, authentic Cantonese. It is written from a linguistic point of view but it is so well-organized and the material is so neatly presented that even someone without much linguistic background would find it a help. There are some comparisons made with Mandarin usage which are interesting and helpful to someone who learned Mandarin first (as I did) but previous knowledge of Mandarin is not assumed or required. A further plus: Lots of contemporary vocabulary. If you think you'd like to be able to say: "The boss has sexually harassed her" "My daughter is giving me an attitude again" or "very soon one will be able to get on the Internet via mobile phones" look no further!

I wasn't too happy when I noticed that all of the text (though the pictures have it) did not include tone marks for the first (high pitch) tone...rendering the book useless to any learner. To the editor: Please fix and resend or give us back our money! (Same problem as with the Basic Cantonese book.)

Intermediate Cantonese is a great textbook to upgrade your knowledge of Cantonese, a language spoken by over 100 million people in southern China (Guangdong, Guangxi, Hong Kong and Macau) and among many overseas Chinese. It's very didactical and quite easy to understand. Cantonese is not easy to learn, but the book makes it pretty easy to learn.

This is a great book on Cantonese Grammar for learners who have graduated beyond "Basic Cantonese: a Grammar and Workbook" by Virginia Yip. Note that this is suitable only as accompanying material, not as a complete book for learning the language. Presentation is quite dense, much more demanding that the Basic Cantonese book.

This is only for the slightly advanced learner, but highly recommended if you really want to understand the structure of the language.